Rebtel Blog

Focus on Mobile Web

A new day and a new post from San Francisco. This time the topic will be on one of the presentations from the actual conference that I found generally interesting, but particularly from a Rebtel perspective.

The session was entitled Mobile Ajax and the Future Web and was held by Daniel Appelquist. Daniel is senior technology strategist with the Vodafone Group based in London, UK, where he primarily works on Web and Internet projects and industry activities.

The first part of the talk (which I found most interesting) was a lot about the two different (and today separate) entities we refer to as “The Web” and “The Mobile Web” and how a convergence between the two is taking place.
In a (not too distant) future there will only be one Web when referring to mobile devices as well as regular laptops and desktops. Thematical Consistency, ensuring that content across all devices is provided coherently and consistently, will be ubiquitous and the standard to aim for. Thanks to devices like the iPhone (which naturally was mentioned as a groundbreaking device in this field), the task of obtaining Thematical Consistency becomes significantly easier.

Daniel also mentioned that today, mobile devices are slowly overtaking desktops and laptop based web usage (so cool). Mobile browsing is in other words seriously on the rise and with that device from Apple that came out last year securing a fourth place overall on the Internet browsing market share list with its 0.15%, we can get a hint of what’s to come. In as little as five years, the majority of the total worldwide web usage is predicted to be mobile (!).

A cool little detail during the talk, which felt very reassuring for us coming from someone like Daniel, was that he mentioned Rebtel (see the picture above) as one of the companies that truly are in the forefront in mobile technology and web. Thank you Daniel, you are a rock star!

T-Mobile to allow calls to the US and Europe as part of inclusive minutes

Calls to the US and Europe as part of your monthly inclusive minutes? Really?

Yes! It looks like at least one of the major mobile operators has started to come around to Rebtel’s way of thinking. T-Mobile’s new pricing plan, Business 1-Plan, allows business customers to call the US and Europe with their inclusive minutes. (International calls are generally excluded from such packages: instead you have to ‘activate’ the service and then pay ridiculous rates for your calls.)

We’re glad to see one of the major operators saying what we’ve been saying for the past two years - international calls shouldn’t cost the earth. Of course, as this is for business customers only it’s still a long way from the kind of open communication model we’d like to see, but it’s a start.

And in the meantime? We’re still here to help you get the most out of your inclusive minutes - and with Rebtel, you can save on calls to anywhere in the world. Not just Europe and the US. Now that’s the business.

An open letter to U.S. Reps. Edward J. Markey and Cliff Stearns

Dear Representatives Markey and Stearns:

As leaders of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, we ask that you consider taking up an important telecom issue that has real impact on lower-income residents of the U.S. and the future of competition in mobile voice communications.

I’m referring to the short code issue now before the Federal Communications Commission in the form of a petition for declaratory ruling that refusing to provision a short code to a customer is unjust and unreasonable discrimination, and violates the law.

This issue is important because short codes are what make it possible in the U.S. for companies to send SMS – text messages – to individuals.

Today, mobile operators still have the ability to act as Big Brother gatekeepers even after a company has received a dedicated or shared short code from the Common Short Code Administration (CSCA), and submitted a specification of traffic flow and commands to each carrier for approval of the process of OPT-IN and OPT-OUT to make sure the recipients really do wish to receive the SMS.

In other words if Verizon, AT&T, Alltel or T-Mobile don’t like what’s in certain SMS, they have the ability to block the message from going through to the consumer.

The FCC petition filed in December by public interest groups Public Knowledge, Free Press and Mobile Commons, cited Verizon’s rejection of NARAL Pro-Choice America’s text messages to its supporters as a prime example of carriers interference with political speech.

Violating American’s sacred First Amendment rights is downright dumb. And Verizon quickly stopped blocking NARAL’s SMS as soon as The New York Times shed some light on what Verizon was up to.

But what may be a better case for why regulation is needed is the U.S. carriers’ refusal to accept SMS from Rebtel, which is also cited in the petition as an example of how Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and Alltel have taken advantage of a perceived regulatory hole to discriminate against competitors.

For example, Verizon – the self-proclaimed “most profitable wireless company in the U.S.” –prevents its customers from sending SMS to themselves from the Rebtel web site because they contain local U.S. phone numbers Verizon customers can use to call friends and family abroad for just pennies per minute instead of the rip-off rates charged by Verizon. Many of these rates escalate beyond $1 per minute, with profit margins that rival the oil companies.

At a hearing last Monday on network neutrality and network management, FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin said, “The time has come for a specific enforceable principle of nondiscrimination.”

We think Mr. Martin is right and should now apply that same position to the short code issue, and stop the arbitrary blocking of consumer access to certain services.

We also think it’s the FCC’s job to figure out where you draw the line between unreasonable discrimination and reasonable, fair business practices.

And, if we really live in a country of free enterprise, we think it’s high time to let the customer – the people – decide what information they choose to receive by SMS, and not have it dictated by the big mobile operators.

We hope you agree with us on this issue and closely monitor the FCC proceeding. And would the FCC believe that it lacks authority to correct these wrongs, we encourage you to introduce legislation that makes clear that the FCC should prevent wireless carriers from unreasonably discriminating against businesses using short codes to interact with their customers.

Sincerely,

Rebtel (the people’s global communication company)

Rebtel On Tour

On the 27th of February, Rebtel’s Street Team invaded the campus of beautiful Warwick University in the British midlands. They hung out with students, handed out goodies, and talked about how the current rates for calling internationally with mobile phones are burning a hole in student wallets across the globe. Even though Facebook and other online based social media tools help out a lot, they’re nothing compared to hearing your mother’s or your best friend’s voice on the phone. It’s the next best thing to actually seeing them in person.

Rebtel’s Street Team introduced the Warwick students to the best (and cheapest) way of keeping in touch with global friends and family: the Rebtel way. Our service was very nicely embraced by both international and local students. The international students were happy to find a new way to get in touch with their family back home and the domestic students were equally as happy because now they can call their newly found friends from different parts of the world conveniently from their regular mobile phones!

For more background info on how things went down at Warwick, check out our Flickr.

AT&T: Please stop playing games

If you’re reading this you most probably already know that Verizon prevents its customers from sending SMS to themselves from the Rebtel web site. These SMS messages contain local U.S. phone numbers that allow Rebtel users to make low-cost or free international calls.

Verizon also prevents its customers from receiving SMS from Rebtel customers outside of the U.S.

Well, it now appears that AT&T Wireless has started playing games with SMS, targeting messages that its customers send to themselves or receive from friends using Rebtel services both from http://www.rebtel.com as well as from Rebtel’s free Facebook conference call service, Group Talk.

To avoid the indictment of blocking Rebtel SMS, it looks like AT&T has turned all SMS from Rebtel services into what’s called Flash SMS. As a result, the messages are only temporarily stored when displayed; as soon as you close the message, it disappears and is not automatically stored in the phones Inbox.

I’m told by my more technical colleges that this is no coincidence that there is a trigger value that has to be set by AT&T to make the SMS into a Flash SMS, instead of a normal message.

I know this is happening because I’m an AT&T Wireless customer and experience their nasty trick regularly when I receive Group Talk notifications for free conference calls. And, friends who are also AT&T subscribers report the same experience.

So Shame on you AT&T Wireless. This is a dirty trick right out of the Verizon playbook, and it’s time to stop.

Rebtel played by the rules. Now it’s Verizon’s turn.

Welcome all Verizon and AT&T customers!

That probably sounds a bit odd coming from Rebtel these days. But yesterday Verizon and AT&T rolled out new plans that give U.S. customers unlimited airtime minutes for a flat fee of $100. And flat fee plans are music to our ears even if the carrier continues to block its customer SMS.

Unlimited airtime minutes means anyone who subscribes to one of these plans now has the ability to make unlimited free international calls to 39 countries around the world using Rebtel’s Smart Call system.

But even if they’re not willing to jump through the few hoops that make the international portion of call free, they can still take advantage of our super low-cost rates for calling any phone, anywhere in the world.

And eventually, we hope that Verizon will come to its senses and stop preventing its customers from sending standard SMS text messages to themselves and their friends if they contain local phone numbers issued by Rebtel.

Late last week I spoke with Robert Poe, a reporter for VoIP-News and DailyWireless about this issue. As any good reporter should do, Robert contacted Verizon after our call. Verizon (no surprise) denies that it is blocking SMS that their customers try to send to themselves or that their friends try to send to them from the Rebtel web site.

Robert declined Rebtel’s help to test our claims, which will make his findings all the more powerful when they come out. In the mean time, with the kind help of my comrade Fredrik Henning, I thought I’d take a minute to shed some light the mechanics of this problem and why Verizon is not telling the truth.

To be able to send SMS to people in U.S. from a system platform, not person to person, a short code number is required to identify the sender of the messages. Therefore every provider of messaging services has to apply for a dedicated or shared short code (a 5-6 digit number) from the Common Short Code Administration (CSCA), which Rebtel had done and received.

The reason for this bureaucracy is that the U.S. market applies interconnect charges differently than other countries. In the U.S. mobile recipients pay for incoming SMS. In contrast, people in Europe do not pay for incoming SMS because the operators in Europe are being paid by the originating operators to cover the cost of delivering the SMS to the recipient.

Rebtel wants its customers to be able to send SMS to their friends that are mobile subscribers in U.S. mobile networks. Rebtel wishes only to send SMS on behalf of the users, and not perform any unsolicited bulk messaging (a.k.a. SPAM or advertising).

So, despite what Verizon spokesman Jeffrey Nelson tells the press, every SMS sent from Rebtel’s system is sent on behalf of the users who have requested that Rebtel send SMS to their friends or to themselves.

But it doesn’t end here. To get a short code implemented in a U.S. mobile operators network a specification of traffic flow and commands has to be submitted to each operator for approval of the process of OPT-IN and OPT-OUT, insuring that the recipients really do wish to get charged for receiving SMS.

Rebtel provided its specification of this process and got it approved by some operators, but not all, namely, Verizon.

So the bottom line is we’ve played by the rules. Our specification follows all requirements to get a short code approved with regards to OPT-IN and OPT-OUT. Yet, Verizon refuses to approve it. What’s that about? Why is this allowed?

We think it’s now time for the industry to stand up to this bullying.

We think the CTIA the trade association “dedicated to expanding the wireless frontier needs to reprimand Verizon and demand they play by the rules.

And if that doesn’t work, then we think it really is time for the FCC to do something about Verizon and its blatant anti-competitive abuse of power.

Verizon: Forget the Short Codes. Let Your Customers Send SMS to Themselves and Friends.

Stupid Rebtel. We should have known better.

Soon after Public Knowledge, Free Press and others filed a petition asking the FCC to rule that text messaging and related short codes are protected from unjust and unreasonable discrimination. Rebtel, which was named in the petition, received some attention in the press, and Verizon was none too happy about it.

I’m talking about the Verizon that reported $1 billion in earning last quarter while adding 2 million wireless customers to bring its total to 65.7 million.

The Verizon that went to Capitol Hill recently as part of the CTIA to ask that they be spared from the indignities of burdensome regulation on their text-messaging services and short-code offerings.

The same Verizon that told BusinessWeek that Rebtel can still text-message our customers to offer their service.

And the very same Verizon that is now preventing its customers from sending standard SMS text messages to themselves and their friends if they contain local phone numbers issued by Rebtel.

Goliath didn’t like the negative attention it received in the press regarding its treatment of little David. It doesn’t want people, especially people at the FCC, to know that Verizon violates their customers freedom of speech every day.

So they contacted Rebtel just before the New Year and told us that they would stop blocking their customers SMS IF Rebtel would shut down all PR on the short code issue and send a letter to the FCC in praise of Verizon and its new openness and cooperation with Rebtel.

Being the trusting souls that we are, we complied. We stopped talking to the press. And when the press called during January we explained that Verizon had seen the light, that we were talking with Verizon and expected to have an announcement from the two companies shortly.

At first Verizon complained because there were some straggler stories appearing on the Web. And then there was silence. No response to our mail. Return phone calls came to a halt. Nothing.

It took us a week or two but we finally realized that we had been tricked. Verizon had tricked us into silence. Well, shame on us! We should have known better. And now we do.

But the true shame and the real crime is that Verizon customers are being prevented from sending SMS messages to themselves and their friends from the Rebtel web site.

We’re not asking for special access or treatment. We just want Verizon customers to be able to send standard text messages to themselves and their friends regardless of the content. That’s what free speech is all about. But Verizon thinks differently.

Because it doesn’t like what’s in those SMS messages, local phone numbers that will connect Verizon customers to their friends and family abroad for just pennies per minute instead of the highway robbery charged by Verizon for the same call and because they don’t like the viral nature of the Rebtel service, Verizon shuts them down. It turns off their customers right to send SMS.

Well, live and learn, as they say. But I promise, this one ain’t over! This David, for one, is pissed.

Group Talk Review

Here at Rebtel, we encourage users of our service to give us feedback on what we can do better and what we’re doing well (flattery always welcome!). Naturally, it’s very nice once in a while to hear from you guys that the work we do is appreciated embraced and makes your lives easier.

As some of you might know, not too long ago we launched a brand new, really neat Facebook app called Group Talk . Group Talk allows users to set up conference calls with each other in a truly simplified manner. You don’t even have to be a Facebook member to join in on the conversation - how sweet is that?

Recently, Group Talk got some well-deserved attention from the wicked people over at the blog Facebook Applications . They write reviews on different, cool, and useful apps you can find on Facebook, and recently they wrote about us (woohoo!!). Here is a short snippet from the review:

“…for people like me living abroad with so many friends to call and so many hours spend in websites providing services like this application does, Group Talk is a really interesting application that lets me stay checking all my stuff in my Facebook plus get connected for free in some cases, or at really cheap rates, with a great quality of sound.”

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank the nice people over at Facebook Applications for the wonderful review (they gave us 4 out of a possible 5, woohoo again!). Thanks guys. Please keep providing all the Social Media and Facebook types like us and others out there with insightful reports!

Lastly, if you have written a review about our Facebook app, our service in general, or have any tips or suggestions on how we can make what we are doing better, please do not hesitate to send an email our way.

Until next time, have a wonderful week!

Global Group Talking

Today Rebtel launched a new Facebook application called Group Talk that lets you setup free conference calls with people in any of the 40 Rebtel countries. 

If you’re not a Facebook user you should join just to use Group Talk.  It makes it super easy to set up free conference calls and has lots of cool bells and whistles worth checking out. 

Once you’ve downloaded Group Talk you can set up a free conference call with as may people as you want in less than a minute.  You just enter your Facebook friends’ names, and click Add.  You can then make the call private – just for the people invited – or public, which makes the call open to any of your friends who want to join. To include people who are not Facebook users you enter the participants’ names, mobile phone numbers or landline numbers and their email addresses, and click Add.  That’s it. Everyone invited to a Group Talk call automatically receives a local dial-in number in the city or country where they live via SMS (text message) or email.  For the first person who joins a conference call, Group Talk offers to notify all of the other invited participants that the Group Talk session is starting. 

Facebook users are able to see public Group Talk conference calls as they’re happening that have been set up by their friends, by members of the Facebook groups that they’ve joined, or by the organizers of events they’ve been invited to attend, and can get a phone number to join any of those Group Talk calls with a single click of the mouse. 

And because Group Talk is built by Rebtel, conference call participants’ personal phone numbers are always kept private. 

Group Talk conference calls are always free – no matter how long you talk. So give it a try.  Do something fun.  Get your friends or family together to celebrate someone’s birthday.  If you’re an Aussie living abroad, set up a Group Talk call with all your mates back home the Saturday after next for Australia Day.  And now that Rebtel is up and running in Shanghai don’t forget Chinese New Year – it’s just around the corner. But whatever you do with Group Talk please drop us a line and tell us what you think.  We hope you enjoy it. Happy talking.

VoIP services compared - and we’re the ‘overall best choice’!

The folks at lucafiligheddu.com decided to compare a bunch of VOIP services. They bought a PAYG SIM card from T-Mobile and, beyond the initial set-up, didn’t use a PC while on the go.

Services compared were Jajah Direct, Mobivox, RebTel ,Talkster and WifiMobile. Rebtel was considered to have the best features and to be the overall best choice. The review concludes:

“RebTel offers the most complete range of features at a very competitive price, letting you choose what to do, whether to use your Rebtel credit for calling out or sharing the cost with the person you are calling by using the call back feature.”

They go on to say:

“I praise RebTel for having really improved their service since its first launch, so that it deserves to be selected as the best choice in this comparison.”

We’re blushing! Cheers dudes. We’re glad you like the service.